New media and the election

Thus far and no farther

The potential—and limits—of the internet in political campaigning

THE transatlantic trade in political tactics has not always been one-way. In 1994 America's Republican Party adopted a Westminster-style policy manifesto for its conquering mid-term election campaign. Thanks to Barack Obama, though, the British have more recently been relegated to taking notes. The part played by internet campaigning in his rise from upstart senator to president has been studied forensically by the Labour Party, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Veterans of the Obama campaign often sweep through London to show the natives how to use new media to organise activists, raise money and communicate with voters. There is talk of Britain being on the verge of its first truly digital election.

Measured against these hopes, the coming campaign will disappoint, and not because British politicians are irredeemably analogue. Labour and Tory insiders agree that the Obama model is hard to export beyond America's unusual polity, with its weak party organisations, primary races and endless, costly campaigns. “Almost any other Western democracy would be a more useful comparator for us,” says one.

In any event, it is easy to overrate what the internet did for Mr Obama. Its main function was to help his campaign do old-fashioned things. Much of the money he raised online was spent on television advertisements, and activists recruited via websites were deployed to canvass voters face-to-face. This focus on tried-and-trusted campaign methods will inform much of the British parties' new media work in the run-up to May 6th, the most likely date for the coming general election.

Between 1997, the first general election when they had official websites, and the last election in 2005, the main parties were improving their online activity at the same snail's pace. In the following three years the Tories raced ahead. Rishi Saha, a former nightclub manager, was brought in to beef up their online presence. He set up WebCameron, an internet video diary featuring David Cameron, the party leader, which continues to this day. The party's website has been overhauled and made more friendly to Google searches. Mr Saha's new media unit is one of the best-funded teams in the Tories' headquarters.

This investment of precious party resources was driven by worldlier motives than just a zeal for technology. Being seen to “get” new media has helped with the rebranding of the Tories as a modern party. Another backroom whizz-kid, Rohan Silva, has helped George Osborne make the policy potential of the internet a major theme of his time as shadow chancellor. (The Tories talk up the cost savings that could be generated by publishing government spending data online.) Just five years ago the notion that Wired, a trendy technology magazine, would laud the Tories as online pioneers would have been fanciful. This month it did exactly that.

In recent years, however, Labour has narrowed the gap. Its head of new media, Sue Macmillan, has assiduously built up an e-mail database. (Experts in all parties agree that although Twitter helps them liaise with journalists, e-mail remains the most important online campaigning tool.) Labour has also become deft at running single-issue campaigns online; on March 16th it launched one to “save” Sure Start children's centres from Tory spending cuts. Gordon Brown, belying his clunking image, has brought tech-savvy communications staff into Downing Street.

Labour's fightback echoes in the independent blogosphere. Websites of the right, such as ConservativeHome and the libertarian Guido Fawkes, once enjoyed a hegemony. Now their opponents on the left are stirring. One is Left Foot Forward, a website run by Will Straw, a Labour activist who volunteered for the Obama campaign while working for a left-leaning think-tank in Washington. Within hours of their release, the latest round of Tory campaign posters were viciously spoofed by left-wing bloggers. The originals are now harder to locate via a Google search than their myriad send-ups. Such alacrity and resourcefulness was once found only in the Conservative half of the blogosphere.

The ultimate goal of the parties' online activities is to reduce the barriers to entry for potential activists. Labour's membersnet portal makes campaigning easier by, for example, letting supporters download contact databases so they can telephone-canvass voters from home. The Tory equivalent, myconservatives.com, is open to non-members too. Mr Saha estimates that there are 150,000 people who would be willing to contribute to the Tory campaign in some way but are not committed enough to be full members. His job is to get as many of them involved as possible.

For the more radical futurologists, this is the shape of politics to come. But those working in the field are as conscious of technology's limits as of its potential. Traditional media, especially broadcasting, remain much more important. Episodes of WebCameron are among the most-watched in the news and politics category of YouTube; his appearance at a south London college this week attracted 15,000 views in its first two days. But evening television news bulletins draw millions—as will, it is hoped, the three televised debates between the party leaders in the run-up to the election.

A bigger problem is that reducing barriers to entry is not the same as raising the desire to enter. The internet cannot make trudging the streets knocking on strangers' doors a more enticing prospect than it is. Neither can it prise donations out of the pockets of anyone unwilling to give them. First-time activists were drawn to Mr Obama's campaign largely because of his personal appeal. Candidates, as an electorate not especially taken with either Mr Brown or Mr Cameron is finding out, are harder to replicate than technologies.